Integrating Quality Modeling in Software Product Lines

Abstract — Due to the large number of possible variants in typical Software Product Lines (SPLs), the modeling of, explicit knowledge of, and predictability of the quality tradeoffs inherent in certain feature selections are critical to the future viability of SPLs. This article presents IQSPLE (Integrated Quality Software Product Line Engineering), an integrated tool-supported modeling approach that evaluates both qualitative and quantitative quality attributes without imposing hierarchical structural constraints. This contributes to better traceability; annotation; constraint enforcement; and quality attribute trade-off analysis- depicting overall product quality impacts on-the-fly. The approach is used in an eHealth SPL scenario, with the results showing that this approach is promising for effectively integrating quality attributes into SPL engineering in conjunction with (UML-based) artifacts